MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2023
Approaching 60,000 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

alternatively
CD: MDT AmazonUK AmazonUS
Sound Samples & Downloads

Carl DAVIDOFF (1838-1889)
Concerto for cello and orchestra No.4 Op.31 (1878) [25.31]
Concerto for cello and orchestra No.3 Op.18 (1868) [28.53]
Pyotr Il’yich TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893)
Nocturne Op.19 No.4 (1886-1888) [4.03]
Pezzo Capriccioso Op.62 (1887) [6.39]
Andante cantabile (1886-1888) [6.27]
Wen-Sinn Yang (cello)
Shanghai Symphony Orchestra/Terje Mikkelsen
rec. Shanghai 2009
CPO 777 432-2 [71.39]

Experience Classicsonline





The Latvian composer Carl Davidoff was a virtuoso cellist. Having studied mathematics at Moscow University, he went to Leipzig’s Conservatory. Leipzig was the musical capital of Europe from the mid-19th century, its Gewandhaus spawning chamber, choral and orchestral concerts since the 1830s and 1840s, when Mendelssohn was de facto Music Director of the city - including founding the Conservatory. Others followed such as Ferdinand David, Julius Rietz and Carl Reinecke, all of whom carried on Mendelssohn’s musical philosophy of attaining what we might call standards of excellence today.
 
Davidoff led the cellos of the Gewandhaus orchestra in 1859 and became professor of cello at the Conservatory. Like so many virtuosi, he would have preferred recognition as a composer - he also hated practising. He returned to Russia in 1862 to take up the prime teaching post at St Petersburg’s music school, led the cello section at the Italian Imperial Opera, and became cellist in the Russian Musical’s Society Quartet, led by Leopold Auer.
 
Beyond the terrain inhabited by cellists it would be Davidoff’s second cello concerto - recorded by the same soloist and conductor, but with the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, on CPO 777 263-2 - which is known. The other three are rarities, and you would be hard pushed to find even the second in a concert programme; I did it in February 2009 with Leonid Gorokhov.
 
This disc also includes three short pieces for cello by Tchaikovsky, so did the earlier disc, though why they are not advertised on the front covers of either booklet is unclear. Tchaikovsky’s name will spring to mind on hearing the music by Davidoff, though an influence from earlier times would be Schumann especially in the shape of the melodic material and orchestration. The opening movement of the fourth concerto, with its fearsome cadenza, is the pick of the bunch, indeed this concerto is as good, if not better, than the second. Adding music by a far greater composer is always dangerous, and Tchaikovsky’s Andante cantabile is the finest music on the disc. Davidoff’s is at least free of that self-inflicted gloom that seems to surround so many Russians from Tchaikovsky via Rachmaninov to Stravinsky and Shostakovich, but it’s hardly surprising considering what they had to put up with, endless cold, wall to wall half-light and repressive regimes.
 
I have reservations about the projection of Wen-Sinn Yang’s sound; with cellists it’s a perennial problem to balance them satisfactorily against a full-size symphony orchestra, which here provides him with accurate and sympathetic support. His tone is given to thinning out as he advances down the finger-board, and only in the cadenza are we able to experience his sound full-frontal. Maybe it’s the unnamed location in Shanghai which does him a disservice. Naxos, on the other hand, have done cellists a service by recording the four concertos and thereby reminding us how fine a cellist Davidoff must have been in his day.
 

Christopher Fifield


 

 

 

 

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.